I thought I understood synaptic. After all, I've been using Debian for at least 10 years. But the AntiX version behaves in ways I can't make sense of.

When you ask to see installed programs, you get a huge list of packages, most of which are not in fact installed. However practically all of them have an orange blob alongside the square status box. I've seen screenshots of synaptic in Ubuntu, which uses the Ubuntu symbol in that location to indicate that the package is supported by Ubuntu, so perhaps the orange circle means "supported by AntiX". But why are so many uninstalled programs shown in the first place?

Hazel there is no way that I can help you with this but I am quite sure that you could get adequate answers at the Antix forum. There is a link on the firefox browser!!

Supported by Debian instead of AntiX. Supported by package maintainer instead of Debian. Hell. Your guess is as good as mine. I just know our team does not have the resources to support games in synaptic package manager.

http://www.imagebam.com/image/aed40e517056950]

You will notice 1 to 1 voice. Which is one of our packages. Has no symbol next to it.

Honest to god, We have not changed it. It is Debian Jessie. Unless you are running a different version than mine.

Edit; if interested in seeing what is ours. Look in /usr/local/bin

I think you're right. It has to be something about the extent to which the package is officially supported. I'm in Debian right now and I've just looked at their version of synaptic; it has the Debian swirl against most packages. Funny how I never noticed that before!

Now can someone explain the other riddle: why does the install list contain so many non-installed packages? Debian's synaptic doesn't behave like that. If you select "installed", all the packages listed have a green block against them. In AntiX, most of them have the empty block of an uninstalled program and, when I right-click on it, the only option provided is to install. In other words, the program's filtration system isn't working.

I can't remember which version of synaptic this is, but it's in AntiX 16. Roky, could you please do me a favour: launch synaptic on your AntiX system, choose "installed" as the filter and see what comes up? I'm going to try some of the other filters later and see what I get. Right now I'm on Bigboy, using Debian 8 (which I think is actually Jessie) and synaptic works quite normally.

ps Horrible thought! It was late last night when I did this and I was tired. Could I accidentally have clicked on "all" instead of "installed"?

Now I have egg on my face! Yup, I confused "Installed" with "All". In fact the filters do work. And I think I have grokked the orange blob thing. It doesn't mean "supported by AntiX"; it means "supported by Debian". The AntiX-specific packages don't have this marking.

I'm marking this as solved. It will teach me not to try to use complex software just before going to bed.

Hey. We all have been there, done that.

At least the snafu did not cost anything.

I'm glad that this was solved, and was quite possibly nothing more than a case of "sleepy eyes" at the time.

I can tell you from well over a decade of using a combination of MEPIS, antiX, and MX software that the software in this family "plays well" with stock Debian software.

Most of the time, standard Debian software is used for a particular distribution. The only packages that differ from the "standard software" are packages specific to the configuration utilities provided in the system, and in some cases, a temporary inclusion of a fairly new, but stable package that is not yet built in the standard Debian repositories. This case is not common at all, and in the few instances where it may have happened, it's usually temporary in nature and superseded by standard packaging once provided or updated.

Not once in well over ten years (back to 2003 for MEPIS, 2006 for antiX, and since MX took over for MEPIS around 2012) have I encountered any packaging inconsistency or conflict with standard Debian packages; I could always overwrite or replace a newer package at any time with an official, standard Debian package.

I've also used Debian's stable, testing, unstable, and occasionally, even "experimental" package groups, and all of them have worked fine. I've also successfully used backport packages to get the latest software for a specific application, while using a stable environment for everything else. Recently I've found that to be the easiest, simplest way to go when I'm not doing much experimentation, and mostly using the software for every day navigation.

I almost always have at least one version of a Debian, MX, and antiX system installed on whatever hardware I happen to be using, and that is the case at the present time.

All the same, it would be helpful if they explained somewhere what the orange blob was!